Southampton University's program on nanostructured photonic metamaterials launched with $9 million grant

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the UK government's leading funding agency for research and training in engineering and the physical sciences, has announced a new six-year program on nanostructured photonic metamaterials, to be established at the University of Southampton (England). The EPSRC is covering costs for the new program with a grant of more than GBP 6 million (>$9 million). The university's vision for the program is "To develop a new generation of switchable and active nanostructured photonic media and to create in Southampton a world-leading center of research on nanostructured photonic metamaterials."

The grant will fund a multidisciplinary program hosted by the university's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) that will involve four schools at Southampton University. Nikolay Zheludev, PhD, DSc will head up the program as director. Zheludev is Professor of Physics and Deputy Director (Physics) of the ORC at the University; he is also Fellow of both the Institute of Physics (London, England) and the Optical Society (OSA, Washington, DC).

The ORC is one of the schools in the Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics at the University of Southampton, focusing on photonics. It was formed in 1989 as an Interdisciplinary Research Centre, merging groups from the School of Physics & Astronomy and School of Electronics & Computer Science.

The ORC is associated with the EPSRC NanoPhotonics Portfolio Centre, also at the University of Southampton. Work there includes research on nanoscopy (superresolution without evanescent fields), extrinsic chirality (optical activity in non-chiral materials), phase-change nanoparticles for optical switching and memory, and negative refraction of light.

For more information on the University of Southampton's program on nanostructured photonic metamaterials, watch for updates at the center's dedicated URL: www.metamaterials.org.uk.